Eastern Workers Seek Funds For Ethiopian Relief Mission

The food and medical supplies are packed. Doctors, nurses and technicians are ready. The plane is set for takeoff.

But unless a group of Eastern Airlines employees can manage a small miracle, this mission of mercy to Ethiopia may be grounded in Miami.

The employees are trying to raise $60,000 for jet fuel that will be used to take the volunteers and their supplies to famine-wracked Ethiopia and its starving millions.

Eastern has donated an L-1011, its largest craft, to carry members of the Northwest Medical Team from Seattle to Miami later this week, and then on to Ethiopia.

An Eastern employees group, People of Eastern Airlines Helping People, had offered to get the jet fuel for the long trip. The group thought it could arrange for fuel companies to donate the necessary 75,000 gallons of fuel but were unable to do so.

``It`s terribly urgent that these people are not stuck in Miami while we`re trying to get jet fuel. Every day is a day wasted and more lives wasted,`` said Eastern flight attendant Mary Kenny.

Kenny and other Eastern employees are frantically contacting local companies, groups and the media in their appeal for funds. They also will be trying to raise the money within the company itself.

The Northwest Medical Team is a group of volunteers from the northwestern states that is based in Salem, Ore. The group initially was organized in 1979 to help Cambodian refugees in camps in Thailand. After sending some 80 volunteers to Thailand over a six-month period, the group eventually was phased out.

But last fall, when word of the catastrophic famine in Ethiopia spread here, the team regrouped. It has raised about half a million dollars in cash and supplies.

``So $60,000 is a relatively small amount,`` said Clover Stein, a board member of the group. ``Eastern has been terrific helping us get our freight there. We hope the people of Florida will rally behind them.``

Stein said the Ethiopia-bound team -- two doctors, 10 nurses and three medical technicians -- may have to pay for a commercial flight to Africa if the funds don`t come through.

The relief agency World Vision will get the team to various camps in Ethiopia where the starving masses have gone for help. Stein said the group will start out at the Allamata camp, about 300 miles north of the capital, Addis Ababa, and will be dispatched from there to other areas where they are needed.

``The staffs there are overworked. These camps have up to 100,000 people living there. The hardest part of the job is turning people away,`` Stein said. ``Our goal is to provide short-term emergency medical care.``

The plan is for Eastern to fly the group and its cargo to Addis Ababa, drop them off and return to the United States. It should take almost four days to get to Ethiopia, Kenny said, because of the necessary layovers and refuelings.

Six pilots will make the flight, as will six crew members. Kenny is planning to make the trip, with the rest of the crew coming from other cities. One flight attendant, from Atlanta, is Ethiopian, she said.

Kenny`s group recently received non-profit status, making any donations to it tax-deductible, she said. Persons who wish to contribute can make checks out to People of Eastern Airlines Helping People, and send them to Eastern Airlines at Miami International Airport, Miami 33148.